Lindsay Lohan and legal scholarship at W&L

In the memorable 1998 flick, “The Parent Trap,” Lindsay Lohan starred as an innocent 12-year-old who embarks on a plot to make her parents fall in love again. However, Lindsay Lohan has greatly changed since 1998. Along with a new sense of fashion, ongoing partying, and a long rap sheet, the actress has found herself in a great deal of new trouble for skipping out on court dates and for violating probation…twice. Lohan, who once had a promising career, shortly will be serving 90 days in jail for not making a court date.

Lohan did not go down quietly. Instead, she went on a legal tweeting rampage, citing a number of sources, including the U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights and an article about a woman sentenced to death by stoning in Iran.

The actress also tweeted, “November 1 marked the 15th anniversary of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. But there were no celebrations, parades, or other festivities in honor of this punishment scheme created by Congress and the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Instead, the day passed like most others during the last 15 years: Scores of federal defendants sentenced under a constitutionally perverted system that saps moral judgment through its mechanical rules.” She included reference to a 2002 article by Erik Luna, a professor at Washington & Lee University.

He discovered the Lohan tweet after his eight-year-old article started getting new hits. But as he told The News Leader in Staunton, the paper is outdated, since significant changes have occurred in the federal law since 2002. “More fundamentally, Ms. Lohan’s case is in the California state system, and my critique of federal sentencing has, at best, some oblique relevance to her plight,” he said.

4 comments

Wow, Lohan’s getting desperate. It’s only 90 days! Funny how people don’t care about issues in the criminal justice system until they are charged/convicted of a crime. I considered it a victory if my poor clients only received 3 months in jail for a probation violation.

Wow, Lohan’s getting desperate. It’s only 90 days! Funny how people don’t care about issues in the criminal justice system until they are charged/convicted of a crime. I considered it a victory if my poor clients only received 3 months in jail for a probation violation.

Her perspective is completely skewed towards her own selfish interests. It is 90 days – how dare she compare her punishment to that of an Iranian woman stoned to death because of her gender. Lindsay snubbed her nose at the justice system and got a very reasonable punishment for that. She knows nothing about the justice system she criticizes.

Her perspective is completely skewed towards her own selfish interests. It is 90 days – how dare she compare her punishment to that of an Iranian woman stoned to death because of her gender. Lindsay snubbed her nose at the justice system and got a very reasonable punishment for that. She knows nothing about the justice system she criticizes.